The present invention relates to techniques for obtaining and using data that associate annotating activities with portions of recordings.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,063 discloses a notetaking system based on a notepad computer with an integrated audio/video recorder, whereby a document is created or retrieved. As the user types on the computer""s keyboard or writes with a stylus on a touchscreen, each character or stroke that is input by the user is invisibly time-stamped by the computer. The audio/video stream is continuously time-stamped during recording. To play a section of the recording back, the user selects part of the note and invokes a xe2x80x9cplayback selectionxe2x80x9d command. The computer then examines the time-stamp and winds the records to the corresponding place in the audio/video recording, where it starts playing, so that the user hears and/or sees what was being recorded at the instant the selected text or strokes were input.
Whittaker, S., Hyland, P., and Wiley, M., xe2x80x9cFilochat: Handwritten Notes Provide Access to Recorded Conversationsxe2x80x9d, Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI ""94 Conference Proceedings, ACM, 1994, pp. 271-277, describe a semi-portable device that integrates handwriting and recorded audio using a write-on tablet connected to a PC. It allows users to access particular points in recorded speech via handwritten notes using temporal indexing. The system co-indexes notes and recorded speech. Users could later identify what was said about a particular topic by selecting a seek option on an audio menu and then gesturing at the part of their notes taken at the time the topic was discussed; the system would play back what was said at the exact time that the original notes were taken.
Stifelman, L. J., xe2x80x9cAugmenting Real-World Objects: A Paper-Based Audio Notebookxe2x80x9d, in CHI ""96 Companion, ACM, 1996, pp. 199-200, describes techniques for capture and access of audio recordings via notes taken on paper placed on top of a digitizing tablet.
The invention addresses problems that arise in notetaking systems and similar systems that obtain and use data associating notetaking or other manual annotating activities with portions of a recording.
Conventional systems like that described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,063 and the article by Whittaker et al. rely on the use of a dedicated computer with a touchscreen, write-on tablet, or other input device that both captures information about the user""s notes at the time of recording and displays indicia of the notes for selection by the user in a playback mode. The systems require a file to be created or retrieved before a user can start making notes in it or continue making notes in an already existing electronic document. By considering an examplexe2x80x94a user being handed a set of papers accompanying a talk or in a meetingxe2x80x94it can be seen that the user cannot, using such a system, mark notes on the paper he or she has just been given, but must break off from the meeting, create a new file or electronic document and set this up displayed on the screen of a computer so that notes can be captured and recorded.
In this and other situations, it is inconvenient to stop and create or retrieve an electronic file or document before beginning notetaking or other manual annotating activity or before beginning playback of a portion of a recording associated with an annotating activity.
The invention alleviates this inconvenience and the problems that cause it by providing techniques that make it possible for a user to begin notetaking or other manual annotating activity associated with a portion of a recording or to begin playback of a portion of a recording associated with an annotating activity without stopping until an electronic file or document can be created or retrieved.
Some of the techniques use an image input device to obtain an image signal set defining a set of one or more images that include information about a manual annotating activity that occurs during a period of time within which a portion of a recording is made or played. The techniques also obtain information about the portion of the recording from a recording/playback device. The techniques use the image signal set and the recording portion signal to automatically obtain activity/recording data associating information about the manual annotating activity with information identifying the portion of the recording. The use of images in this manner makes it unnecessary to stop before notetaking as in the conventional techniques. The manual annotating activity can be performed on a marking medium, and can be identified by position data or shape feature data obtained from the image signal set in various ways. The activity/recording data can include a pair of data items, one an identifier of the annotating activity and the other an identifier of the portion of the recording, such as a timestamp obtained in response to a user selection.
Other techniques provide a system that includes recording/playback circuitry, image input circuitry, and processing circuitry that obtains activity/recording data as described above. In addition, the system can be used to replay a portion of the recording, such as in response to information about a similar annotating activity. Such information may be obtained from an image signal set or from signals from user selection circuitry for selecting annotations.
Yet other techniques are playback techniques that use image input circuitry to obtain an image signal set defining a set of one or more images that include information about a manual activity relating to a marking medium. Here again, the use of images in this manner makes it unnecessary to stop before requesting playback as in the conventional techniques. If the annotating activity, whether manual or otherwise, produced information about the annotating activity similar to that described above, playback can be requested with a similar manual activity. In other cases, playback can be manually requested using a printed version of text or annotations produced by the. annotating activity. For example, if text annotations were entered by keyboard, the recording associated with one of the annotations can be played back by manually scanning the printed version of that annotation and performing optical character recognition (OCR) to obtain an identifier of the annotation. Or, identifying markings can be printed with each annotation, and the recording associated with one of the annotations can be played back by manually scanning the annotation""s identifying markings.
The techniques may be implemented in a system for taking notes on paper during a recording (typically audio or video) and for using manual activity on paper as an index to control playback of the recording. In addition to using paper both for annotation and playback, the techniques may be implemented to allow the user to take notes on paper and control playback with an electronic device, or to take notes using an electronic device and control playback with a paper version of the notes.
The techniques can also be implemented in ways that allow the user to make a note on paper with a combined pen/camera or with pen or pencil. If notes are made with pen or pencil, they can either be subsequently scanned or can be written under a camera. An identifying feature of the note can be computed from input images. The feature can be stored in a table with the current timestamp of the recording. This process may be repeated for other notes. A note may be subsequently selected to request playback. Its identifying feature can be computed and matched against the set of stored features and the timestamp associated with the matching feature can be used to play back the associated portion of the recording.
Some of the techniques can be implemented with substrates, e.g. paper, or documents produced therefrom, that include visible or invisible coded markings identifying the substrate and locations or zones within it. The markings can be Xerox DataGlyphs, described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,128,525, incorporated herein by reference.
An advantage is that the invention allows handwritten notes on standard paper or other conventional media to index and control playback of recordings.
The following description, the drawings, and the claims further set forth these and other aspects, objects, features, and advantages of the invention.